The Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has confirmed in all its terms the sentence of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas that in October 2024 sentenced a total of three years and nine months in prison to a fake doctor who deceived two couples by making them believe they were paying for the services of an international baby surrogacy clinic.
The TSJC has dismissed the defense's appeal and has confirmed the instance ruling that imposed on the accused a first sentence of one year and nine months for a crime of fraud in reference to a couple who requested his services and went to Kaliningrad to donate semen, a second of one year and nine months for scamming another couple with whom he negotiated a non-existent surrogacy of a baby in Thailand, Mexico or Russia and, finally, a six-month prison sentence for forgery.
In addition to the criminal convictions, the fake doctor must face the payment of compensation to his victims for an amount of more than 80,000 euros.
The ruling confirms that in 2015 the accused advertised himself as a "gynecologist" and general director of the entity Yoursurrogacy, and stated that this company "had a multidisciplinary team made up of lawyers, doctors, psychologists, translators and personal managers, which was 100% dedicated to international surrogacy programs in countries where surrogacy was supposedly legally regulated, citing among others Russia, which in reality prohibited this practice."
Such a ruse, the ruling continues, led, among other injured parties, a couple from the Islands interested in his services to formalize a contract with the accused to have a baby through surrogacy, for a total price of 57,500 euros, paying a first installment of 31,500.
In July 2015, the couple traveled to Russia and met the accused in Kaliningrad, making a semen deposit in a clinic in that city. The commitment was never finalized, with the now convicted man explaining to the victims that the surrogate mother had had an abortion.
In the second case, the accused contacted another couple, who paid the fake doctor various amounts to access paternity through baby surrogacy and endured how the accused first told them that the gestation would be in Thailand, then in Mexico and finally in Russia, when in reality the commitment never materialized nor was the money returned to those interested.
